Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday April 04, 2012 @01:28PM
from the let-google-do-the-looking dept.

Eponymous Hero writes "The Geordi La Forge in all of us rejoices as Google announces Google Glasses, the augmented reality glasses that will no doubt spy on everything you look at and target you with ads at that crucial moment. The only question left begging is how soon can we merge them with bionic eye implants?"

At first I read it as "Glasses now have access to everything. Be afraid. Be very afraid." and was going to comment how you can mitigate the security risks of theft/lost by tying these into a smart phone sized device and these being effectively the input/output.

Then I reread it and saw "Google now has access to everything". Welp. I guess they've already taken control of my brain.

I had a cornea transplant and went thru a lot of the needle-in-the-eye bit. You vastly understate the issue. I ended up telling the surgeon early on "you need to sedate me because if you poke me with that needle again in the eye I'm going to do my level best to kill you".

Even today, with follow-ups, if a stitch breaks and needs pulled it totally freaks me out.

Ouch, a cornea transplant is a lot more complex than a lensectomy. The lensectomy only requires one needle, one hole, no stiches. They shoot ultrasound down the needle to turn the lens (not the cornea, the focusing lens behind the iris) to jelly, suck it out, and put the implant in down the needle.

I'll have to ask my drinking buddy Bill about his transplants. Both corneas and a liver. The guy keeps it up and they'll have replaced all of him.

You realise you have to have a needle stuck in your eye to get an implant? It doesn't hurt but it does kind of freak you out.

Is it any worse than lasik? In that case they slice the front of your eyeball so a flap is hanging off, lift the flap up, fire the laser into the exposed cornea, then lay the flap back down & smooth it out with a stick. All while you're awake & lucid of course.

Getting lasik was one of the best decisions I've made, but I have no idea how I got through the process without being

Eh. William Gibson already went over this in his Blue Ant trilogy, mostly in Spook Country.
I'm actually working to get back out of artificial enhancement of an environment. Too many people don't see what's actually there without something artificial modifying the experience.

that won't happen because google is also driving your car for you while you look at lolcats, what you should expect is lots of people walking into and tripping over things as the watch netflix. with one eye and update facebook with the other

As far as AR goes, the demo looks a little meh. Good AR makes better use of positional awareness (location & attitude), and takes visual cues from a camera to figure out just what you are looking at. The result is AR that actually augments reality, rather than just displays a few amusing overlays on top of it.

For example, instead of the annoying popup that says "Turn left at XYZ street", this thing ought to give you directions by overlaying a subtle line over the sidewalk... then you just follow the Yellow Brick Road. The popups would even be more annoying (and perhaps dangerous) while driving, while displaying a line on the road would be ok (perhaps also highlighting exit signs you need to be aware of). Or imagine AR-enabled instructions (posted on Youtube perhaps), that don't just explain you how to replace your iPhone's battery for example, but highlights the actual parts as you work on them, showing you what goes where etc.

Such AR would also enable something Google might be interested in: overlaying billboards with their own ads. Of course you could use it as a RL adblock, and remove the ads altogether (someone called this "diminished reality").

Such AR would also enable something Google might be interested in: overlaying billboards with their own ads. Of course you could use it as a RL adblock, and remove the ads altogether (someone called this "diminished reality").

Oh that so rocks. I was getting all annoyed by the idea of real-life <blink> tags, but real-life ad-block is freaking genius.

I can even imagine a crowd-sourced library of "behind" photos - so that billboards and other uglies would be replaced with images of the actual skyline that they currently block out.

Over time, as the information it provides genuinely proves itself useful, the brain would become increasingly dependent on the additional information being provided by it to convey an accurate presentation of things. Unless they were accustomed to dealing with periodic system disruptions, removing it for even a short period would result in the same sort of disorientation and confusion that arises if a person suddenly lost one of their senses.

Why would you say that? I've been looking forward to augmented-reality glasses for a decade at least, and I already wear glasses due to poor vision. If they released a version that fairly inconspicuously worked with or supplanted regular glasses, there would be little reason for me not to buy them.

...they looked like regular shades and not some "I am a geek" fashion statement. I think it's bad enough seeing social zeros walking around with bluetooth headsets in their ears, although thankfully that practice seems to be on the wane.

I noticed that when the user went to share a photo he just took it went on to his Google+ account. If I have the choice of sharing on Facebook then that'd be cool.

I like the concept though. I wonder if Apple are going to get in on this act with some iShades or something. Augmented reality is becoming common now on the smartphone with apps like Yelp which has a nifty Monocle feature that lets you see all the local businesses nearby just by pointing the phone at your surroundings. Stands to reason that eyewear will end up doing the same thing.

Yes! Then you can play racing games while driving to work! Using Google Maps layers for tracks! Better yet, you can race against your coworkers to see who will get to work first. Productivity will soar!

It's bad enough that someone will be talking on a bluetooth headset without you knowing, making it seem strange that someone is talking to them selves. Now they will be looking at you and talking to someone else. I can see it now - "Are you looking at me?" "What are you looking at!", hmm.

The last thing I want is to be more plugged in. I don't want things popping up in my field of vision unbidden either. I am obviously not their target market. Maybe teens and college kids will love it. To me it's a total fail.

Just like your iPhone and iPad, you will be able to turn these off/remove them when you don't want things popping up unbidden in your field of vision. More likely they will be configurable enough to manage the balance between unbidden and on demand behavior. If not, there will be a CyanogenMod build that is configurable enough to tweak to you're liking, including compensating for your profound lack of self-discipline if you can't make yourself unplug on your own.

Did you ever look at your parents when you were young and wondered when you'd get to that point where your thought patterns would switch from "cool" to "what we've got is good enough, dagnabbit" and you'd be officially old? Congrats, you're there. Its not a set age, its a state of mind.

Are there going to be problems with these? Sure. Will they be clunky and not good to start with? Of course. Is it the start of "something new", possibly something awesome? Most definitely. Sorry you won't be along for the ride.

The one common thread in all of these videos with smartphones, smart glasses, etc. is an ADD-hyperactive 20-ish person who is *always* portrayed as living in a bustling city with a million different things happening at once...and never working at a job. While people in this type of environment really do exist (Strand Books is a family book store in NYC, btw), that is not how the majority of the US and the rest of the world lives.

I think a more exciting and relate-able way of introducing this technology is to show how it could be used some sort of work or industrial environment. For example, I found a lot more ways to use and relate to a smartphone at work before I could begin to integrate one into my non-work life.

this is meant for the 20 something kid who shares rent of an apartment with roommates and spends all his/her money on eating out, partying and buying crap. this is just a way to get him to buy something as soon is it pops onto the glasses

for normal people with kids and jobs i don't see a point of wearing these

They show those kinds of videos to display the ways you can use the technology, not necessarily how you will use them. How you will use them at work depends entirely on what kind of job you have. For instance, if you ever have to go into a warehouse type setting, they could display an overlay with the positions of various items. Or the status of a specific server in a server room (IP address, hardware/software configuration). Or a car-repairman could use it to look up whether a specific part is in stock sim

All will go well until Google decides this is yet another project they blew a bunch of money on for no real return, and send a remote-kill command to all the units. Like Buzz and Wave and Health and and and...

They should link to that product the ideas behind SixthSense [pranavmistry.com], at least for display, gestures as user interfaces, and what kind of information you can pick and expand from environment.

I have no idea how they expect to burn so many CPU cycles doing real time computation and keeping a bright-in-daylight screen on while having decent battery life on a device so small that it fits on glasses frames. The idea is cool, but I think we need a breakthrough in battery technology to support these Google Glasses.

Was I the only one who thought it was kinda sad that he "shared" the sunset with the girl, but he really was there all alone?

Well, happiness and sadness are relative to your starting position. If you had a real girl before, of course it'd be sad. But if all you have is a waifu, being able to see her besides you would be an upgrade.

You just know... "With those things sitting right at your temple this has got to cause RF induced brain cancer! The CDC and WHO should stop this before it can even get started! OMG OMG OMG."... it's going to happen.

I can't wait for the app that will analyze a woman's clothing and give you a virtual facsimile of what she looks like naked. It's going to happen. And then it will be banned in the app store. And then it will be remade for the use of one pedophile on rooted glasses so they can see little kids naked out in the street. And then congress will get involved and the glasses will be banned.

The MPAA attempt to compel theaters to disable my camera as I head into a movie?The RIAA will seek to eavesdrop and charge me for listening to music I may not have licensed from them.Cops will pull drivers over for distracted driving (even if only a GPS app was running), and compel drivers to share their unlock password to review what was running.Someone will post videos from the changing room at a gym and get sued.An employee will sue after being fired when management jacks into the camera on the company i

Resistance? As a cyborg I'll clue you in -- you not only won't resist, you'll pay good money to be assimilated. It cost me over $1000, and that's after insurance. I'll probably get the other eye done in a couple of years.

The standard advertising model is right out - I'll happily pay for it.

I'd love face recognition, but only from my personal address book. I have a horrible memory for faces, so I'd love that sort of memory aid. But having it auto-dial up Facebook and such is a bit too creepy for my taste.

It'd need to let me turn on/off notifications - I don't let my iPhone buzz when I get an email, I'm sure as hell not going to accept popups.

If there's a full-color display, I want zoom capability - use the camera, show me what I'm looking at, and then "enhance".

And if they're going to make it voice-activated, they'd damned well make sure it only listens to me. (Or else I *will* troll everyone wearing one of these.)